dream interrupted

The hour was late, somewhere deep within the dreamy void between night and day. The six beers I drank earlier were still coursing through my veins. The Sigur Ros album I began on my iPod had finished and I was fast asleep long before the end. The room was warm enough to not want any blankets or clothing other than boxers, but not hot enough to demand air conditioning.

I'm having a dream. Somewhere in Japan, seeing sights with a blonde girl named Jess. We marveled at the sights before us: Buddhist monuments, towering skyscrapers, ancient shrines, enormous hotels. And beer gardens.

Earlier that day, in reality, away from the dream, Jess called to invite me to a beer garden back in Iwaki. I could not attend, as I was across the prefecture in Aizu, getting to know the Ando family on a weekend-long homestay. Somehow Jess calling me worked its way into my dream. I don't know what sightseeing had to do with it.

Anyway. The dream was interrupted. I heard something. A door sliding open. Feet patting across the tatami mat floor.

There is someone else here now. I can sense their presence in the darkness.

I want to say, "Who's there?" but my mind is drunk and tired and the Japanese won't come out. English won't work. It's a child. Kai. He walks over to me. I'm on the ground, laying on a futon. The blanket is thrown off to one side. Kai takes it and covers himself up, lying at my feet.

I don't know what to do. I don't know what this means. Kai is autistic. He can't use words. In order to communicate with him you need pictures and gestures. I don't know why he's in the room with me in the middle of the night.

He nuzzles my feet, curling up close. Inching up my legs, snuggling my femur, holding on tight. Eventually he works his way up to my torso and we lock in a full-on spoon.

What would you do if a six year old autistic Japanese boy walks in to your room in the middle of the night while you're fast asleep and starts spooning with you while you're wearing nothing but underwear?

This is not a question I ever thought I’d have to ask myself. I advise you to take a moment and consider it, in case you ever find yourself in a similar situation.

So what did I do?

Well, I just went with it. I scooted over the edge of the futon to make room and fell back asleep with Kai at my side, his face buried in the small of my back.

When I woke up he was gone and I was hung over and alone. Not an unusual way for me to start a morning.


***

Backtrack to earlier in the day, before the late-night encounter.

I finish couple of mandatory Japanese classes at a university and now I’m sitting in a room with the rest of the new Fukushima JETs. Earlier we all received a page of information about our host families for the weekend. As I sit there waiting for my family to arrive, I read over the info sheet.

Hiroaki Ando, 37, teacher; Miyuki Ando, 36, housewife; Rui, 7, first grade; Tai, 6, kindergarten; twin brother Kai, mild autism.

There’s more written in Japanese, a portion of it has been translated:

“Strong drinkers welcome! I smoke, but will refrain if you do not.”

Oh no, Ando-san. There will be no refrain necessary. I think we’ll have a good time.

Slowly people’s names are called out. The crowd cheers and claps whenever a name is announced. Sending off their peers with godspeed.

When the man calls out James Foley, I get up and go. I’d been rehearsing in my head how the first few moments of the initial meeting would go. I had the Japanese all thought out, I had some questions ready.

Of course all that shit goes out the window when you finally meet your maker.

I was taken by surprise. My host dad was waiting for me when I walked out of the classroom. I’m a lot taller than he is, but he is solid and well-built, wearing a T-shirt and athletic shorts. I’m expecting a bow and all the obligatory Japanese that spews out when you meet someone for the first time.

Instead he extends his arm for a handshake and in English says, “Hi, how’s it going? Please call me Hiro.”

Along with him are two of the boys, Rui and Tai.

It’s about a 20 minute car ride from the university to their home in a new suburb of the city. In the car I talk with my host dad and the boys.

“Rui, how old are you,” I say in Japanese.
“I’m seven,” he says back to me in English.
Hmm. Impressive for a seven year old.
“Can you guess how old I am?”
“Uhh, you’re 23.”
“Good guess. How’d you know?”
“I read it on your sheet.”

Smart kid. He likes Pokeman and beetles. Not Beatles. Beetles. Japanese boys love beetles. The nasty fuckers with long horns and huge pincers. They collect them in two varieties: alive and in plastic. The boys have a terrarium filled with beetles and they sit there and watch them mill about and occasionally fight. When the living ones aren’t in the fighting spirit, the boys resume the violence with their plastic, life-size replicas.

Rui and Tai are pretty much inseparable. They play Nintendo together and run around and fight and do all the shit that little boys like to do to each other.

Kai is a different story.

The first thing I noticed about Kai, before I saw his deep and beautiful black eyes, or his six-year-old, gap-toothed smile, was his prepubescent, uncircumcised penis.

Indeed, an unusual first impression have. But, then again, Kai is an unusual boy.

When I first saw him he wasn't wearing pants. His dad gave me a heads up about this during the car ride over. The kid just doesn’t like wearing clothes. He had on a T-shirt when I first walked into their home. But it was off within the minute and he was running around the living room and bouncing off the walls and anything else in his path.

There’s a small exercise trampoline set up against the wall of the living room. The naked boy jumps on it for an eternity, banging his head and hands on the wall. Nobody in the family seems to pay it any attention. They don’t hear the pounding and the screams. They don’t see the bouncing naked boy and his flailing penis. Or so it seems. But after six years, I guess they’re used to it.

His parents, Miyuki and Hiro, are the most patient and tolerant people I have ever met. They take everything in stride and good humor. I was amazed at level of noise and calamity they seemingly just didn’t notice. My mind traveled back to the days when I still lived with my mother and siblings, years ago.

If we so much as made a wrong step on the floor at the wrong time and the creek of the old wooden floorboards traveled downstairs to my mother’s lair, we’d hear her roar and scream to be quiet, that we’re making too much noise, that she can’t hear her show. I always found this ironic because her outbursts were usually much louder and longer than any of our trivial noise infractions.

This was my first time living with three little boys. And I don’t think I’d ever met an autistic person before I met Kai. Their parents are saints of tolerance and patience.

Talking with and getting to know them was a great experience. The wife doesn’t really know English and she’s a hell of a cook. She fed me better than my grandmother. From the minute I walked into her home I had food in front of me. She worked hard to prepare the meals and she went out of her way to abide by a request that I not eat beef or pork. She’d always serve the kids first, then me and Hiro. Sometimes, but not often, she’d sit down and eat something with us. She is very skinny.

Kai is a big eater. The first night he devoured every single bowl of tuna and asparagus appetizer that was placed on the table. Then he proceeded to eat just about everything else he could get his hands on, all within a span of about 15 minutes. Then he’d indicate he was full and leave the table, striping off the apron his mom put on him before the meal, and goes back to jumping naked on the trampoline.

The dad knows quite a bit of English. Between the two of us we know enough about our respective foreign language of choice to construct sentences and carry on basic conversation. We just lacked the vocabulary to make it fluid. So we’d sit there at the table, drinking sake and beer and smoking cigarettes, dictionaries in hand, talking about any and everything, pausing to look for words we didn’t know or a simpler way of explaining a point or idea. We hit on George Bush, the Iraq war, the Japanese government and education system, the importance of locally grown food, and the difficulties of raising a child with autism. And of course we traded of names of movies and actors we liked.

The mom loves Cameron Diaz and thinks she’s pretty. She was shocked when I told her she was washed up and not worth anybody’s time back in the states.

When I left they gave me a present. Aizu is famous for its hand thrown pottery. They gave me a cup. It’s glazed porcelain and a blush design the looks like melting stalactites. It’s sitting on my shelf right now. I can see it. And from now on whenever I look at it I will be reminded of the Ando family. Though really, how will I ever forget?